In the spotlight: Coventry City Council improves access to planning data through digital transformation

Background

Planning decisions depend on accurate, accessible information. From listed buildings and conservation areas to protected trees, councils manage large volumes of data that must be kept up to date and made available to the people and teams who need it.

For Coventry City Council, improving how that information was managed had become an important part of its wider digital ambitions.

The council’s work forms part of Open Digital Planning (ODP), a government-supported community bringing together local planning authorities, digital specialists and central government to modernise England’s planning system. Supported by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), the initiative helps councils improve their digital capabilities, share expertise and develop more accessible, data-driven planning services.

Coventry received support through the Digital Planning Improvement Fund (DPIF), an MHCLG funding programme designed to help local planning authorities improve planning data, develop digital skills and adopt modern planning practices. Under the 2025/26 programme, successful authorities could receive £50,000 to assess their digital maturity, undertake training and improve and publish planning datasets.

For Coventry, the fund provided both a framework and a dedicated timeframe to consolidate existing datasets and progress improvements that had been planned for some time.

The council wanted to make planning data easier for the public to access, improve its quality and establish more consistent data management practices. It was also interested in exploring new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), and their potential applications within the planning department.

Challenge

Much of Coventry’s planning information was fragmented, with documents and geographical data sometimes held in different locations.

For example, information relating to Article 4 Directions, which restrict certain permitted development rights, and Conservation Areas was spread across different parts of the council’s website.

Other important information was difficult to access or use. Details relating to Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs), including key dates and the status of individual orders, were held in PDF documents rather than structured datasets.

Some datasets also required manual monthly updates, creating additional administrative work.

The challenge was not just to introduce new technology, but to improve the underlying quality, accessibility and consistency of planning information while ensuring that changes reflected how planning services actually operate.

Solution

Coventry adopted a digital-first approach combining new data management tools, improvements to existing systems and closer collaboration between teams.

Following staff training, the council introduced FME as a core tool for managing datasets. It is now used daily to create datasets, automate previously manual updates and produce new information to support decision-making.

The council also upgraded its TPO management system, making it easier to maintain records and track orders through different stages of the process.

Improvements were made to several key planning datasets, including Article 4 Directions, Conservation Areas, Listed Buildings and TPOs.

For Article 4 Directions and Conservation Areas, documents and spatial information that had previously been stored separately were brought together to make them easier to access.

For Listed Buildings, the council added curtilage information alongside existing building outlines, with this work completed in parallel with an HM Land Registry project. The TPO dataset was also expanded to include dates, statuses and monitoring information previously contained only in PDF documents.

To improve internal data sharing, Coventry introduced Web Feature Service (WFS) feeds, allowing planning data to flow directly into back-office systems, including Land Charges. This helps ensure different teams are working from the same version of a dataset.

The council also drafted a new structure for its planning webpages to make information easier for the public to find. The proposed changes are undergoing departmental review.

Throughout the project, the Planning team worked closely with the council’s Digital and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) teams to develop practices that could be applied more consistently across the organisation.

Results

The project has improved the quality and accessibility of planning information while reducing the manual effort involved in maintaining datasets.

Several datasets that previously required monthly manual updates can now be refreshed at the push of a button.

The introduction of FME has also enabled the council to create datasets it previously lacked the processing capability to produce, providing additional information to support planning decisions.

Other improvements include:

• Easier access to documents and spatial information relating to Article 4 Directions and Conservation Areas.
• More complete Listed Buildings data, including curtilage information.
• Improved TPO records, with key dates and statuses available as structured data rather than held solely in PDFs.
• More consistent internal data sharing through WFS feeds, reducing the risk of different teams using conflicting versions of information.
• Stronger working relationships between Planning, Digital and GIS teams.
• Coventry’s project team is a small digital team based within the Planning department. This has helped keep practical planning requirements at the centre of decisions about data and technology.
• The council also found that understanding the complexities of real-world planning processes was essential when designing new systems and data structures.

Next steps

Coventry plans to build on the improvements by extending its data management standards to other datasets held within the planning service.

The council is also looking at adopting PlanX, a digital planning tool developed through the Open Digital Planning community, while continuing to improve how information is shared internally and with external partners.

It intends to explore further opportunities to use digital tools, building on the capabilities and working practices developed through the DPIF project.

“The Digital Planning Improvement Fund has got the ball rolling on digital transformation; it has unlocked a huge number of possibilities and has changed how we will work long into the future. The change initiated by the project is far from over!” said Alice Lee, Planning Technician at Coventry City Council.